At 10am on Wednesday, Tony Nicklinson finally got what he wanted. In his Wiltshire home, surrounded by those he loved, he slipped into a peaceful death.

Less than a week before, millions had seen him outside the high court in his wheelchair, racked with sobs. His wife, Jane, spoke to the TV cameras on his behalf, quietly explaining his distress at the refusal of the court to give him the assurance he had requested: that anyone who helped him to kill himself would not be charged with murder.

Once she paused, to wipe away his tears. Even those who disagreed with him, including the judges, were deeply moved.

The draft judgment of the court had a devastating impact on Nicklinson. His wife had told his lawyer, Saimo Chahal, that "the fight seemed to go out of him". She added: "He said that he was heartbroken by the high court's decision that he could not end his life at a time of his choosing with the help of a doctor."

Nicklinson, 58, was paralysed from the neck down, only able to communicate by interacting with a computer through blinking and moving his head. But he had one option left – refusing food. This he did. Over the weekend, he contracted pneumonia and deteriorated rapidly.

He had made an advanced directive back in 2004, a year before a stroke paralysed his body during a business trip to Athens, refusing any life-sustaining treatment.

In the end, he died without assistance, with Jane, his daughters, Beth and Lauren, and his sister Ginny beside him.

He escaped going to the Swiss assisted-dying group, Dignitas, near Zurich. "He doesn't see why the hell he should have to go to a foreign country to die in the middle of an industrial estate," his wife said after the court case.

Nicklinson did not understand how the court could refuse his request for a dignified assisted suicide at home.

When Chahal, and Nicklinson's barrister, Paul Bowen QC, visited him last week, two days after the ruling, he spelled out on his computer: "So, we lost. In truth, I am crestfallen, totally devastated and very frightened. I fear for the future and the misery it is bound to bring.

"I suppose it was wrong of me to invest so much hope and expectation into the judgment but I really believed in the veracity of the arguments and quite simply could not understand how anybody could disagree with the logic. I guess I forgot the emotional component."

The three judges who heard the case, Lord Justice Toulson, Mr Justice Royce and Mrs Justice Macur, said that in spite of their deep sympathy for Nicklinson – and a second paralysed man known only as Martin, who also wanted help to die – it had to be for parliament, not the courts, to decide whether to change the law.

Any alterations would need "the most carefully structured safeguards which only parliament can deliver," they said.

They stated: "Voluntary euthanasia is murder, however understandable the motives may be." Doctors and solicitors who helped someone die would be "at real risk of prosecution".

Nicklinson, who had lived an active life before his stroke, playing sport and travelling around the world, found it unbearable to have to be washed, dressed and fed by carers and moved from bed to wheelchair by means of a sling. He described his life as "dull, miserable, demeaning, undignified and intolerable". He had been a civil engineer, working for a Greek company but based in the United Arab Emirates, where he was vice-chairman of the Arabian Gulf Rugby Football Union.

After the stroke, he was left dependent on round-the-clock care. He had said: "I cannot scratch if I itch. I cannot pick my nose if it is blocked and I can only eat if I am fed like a baby – only I won't grow out of it, unlike a baby. I have no privacy or dignity left. I am washed, dressed and put to bed by carers who are, after all, still strangers. I am fed up with my life and don't want to spend the next 20 years or so like this."

Chahal described Nicklinson as "an extraordinary man", who was "gutsy, determined and a fighter to the end". It had been a privilege to work with him, she said. "I only wish the outcome had been different during Tony's lifetime."

She said the legal action he had initiated, which asked for a change to the law of murder to permit assisted suicide, now had to come to an end, but that "the right to die with dignity, issues Tony championed, will not be forgotten due to the light that [he] shone on them and … this important debate will continue due to Tony".

Martin's case will continue. His lawyers said on Wednesday they were appealing against the court's decision, which, they said, denied their client "the opportunity to take necessary steps to end his own life".

Unlike Nicklinson, Martin was not asking for changes in the law on murder. His case was for an assurance of immunity from prosecution for any professional person, such as a lawyer or a doctor, who helped him to die in the UK.

This would be like the assurance from Keir Starmer, the director of public prosecutions, who said close family members helping anyone go to Switzerland to die would be unlikely to face prosecution on their return to Britain.

While ethicists said Nicklinson's case would cause a spike in public opinion in favour of assisted dying, there was some strong opposition, including among doctors, regarding people not suffering a terminal illness. The Royal College of Physicians said it did not back a law change after the high court ruling. "It remains illegal for doctors to intentionally and deliberately terminate the life of someone who is not terminally ill."

A survey of RCP fellows and members in 2006 showed that doctors were not in favour of a change in the law to allow them to do this, said John Saunders, chair of the ethics committee. "A change in the law would also have severe implications for the way society views disabled people."

A tweet posted on Nicklinson's profile on Wednesday morning, which was regularly updated for him by members of his family, read: "You may already know, my dad died peacefully this morning of natural causes. He was 58." Another post added his final Twitter message: "Before he died, he asked us to tweet: 'Goodbye world, the time has come, I had some fun.' "